The present invention relates generally to automatic accompaniment devices having a fill-in function, and more particularly to such an automatic accompaniment device which is provided with a fill-in repeat function for allowing a specific fill-in pattern to be repetitively performed in response to continued actuation of a fill-in switch and which is so improved as to effectively avoid undesirable musical unnaturalness in repeating the fill-in pattern.
Such automatic accompaniment devices for chord, bass, rhythm etc. are conventionally known which, in response to continued actuation of a predetermined fill-in switch, repeat an automatic accompaniment performance by, upon arrival at the end of a fill-in pattern, returning to the head of a first measure of the pattern (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,628,788, for example).
However, the above-mentioned prior automatic accompaniment devices are designed to always repeat a fill-in pattern from the beginning of the pattern and thus would cause undesirable musical unnaturalness. Because, each fill-in pattern is normally composed of an introductory portion and a pattern portion following the introductory portion, and when repeating a fill-in pattern, the introductory portion of the pattern is repetitively performed, thus unavoidably resulting in musical unnaturalness.